It has been a long felt need to design an aircraft with the ability to fly various missions, whereby, the plane can quickly change between a Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) aircraft, a surveillance or weapons platform, a commercial transport, a supersonic aerospace vehicle or a plane to loiter at high altitudes. Previous work on variable sweep wings aircraft such as the F-14 Tomcat, The F-111 Aardvaark, and the B-1B Bomber have been able to improve take off and landing performance over other supersonic vehicles yet they suffer major shifts in aerodynamic balance and reduced supersonic performance with the additional weight and complexity of the variable sweep wings. Previous work on the oblique wing has not produced a production aircraft and furthermore, still faces safety and technological challenges. Neither the variable sweep wing nor the oblique wing concepts have produced a commercial vehicle.
A further long-term desire has been for an aircraft to safely fly supersonic over long distances with good take off and landing characteristics. Although attempts have been made for the before mentioned goals, the Concorde has been the only commercial vehicle produced. However, the Concorde has recently been abandoned. All of these concepts have used a delta or highly swept wing design, which attributes to many of the problems associated with these supersonic planes. In general, the low lift to drag characteristics of these planes creates problems such as increased fuel consumption, smaller payloads, high heat loads and poor take off and landing characteristics. At transonic speeds, the delta wing design also experiences major shifts in aerodynamic balance and subsequently, the Concorde must utilize an intricate system to move fuel around to help control its weight and balance.
Safe air transportation has always been a primary concern. Current safety methods rely on the aircraft to survive a vehicle malfunction or failure. Small military aircraft use ejection seats or individual parachutes. No current system is operating in which one or more of the modules or sections of an aircraft is designed to separate from the stricken parent vehicle in an emergency and safely carry the crew and passengers to earth.
The high cost and economics of current aircraft manufacturing, maintenance, training and flight-testing contributes to much of the expense of aircraft ownership and operations. An economical vehicle could be easily constructed of modular sections to provide a variety of aircraft platforms, which would utilize common cockpits, aircraft systems and structures. Such an aircraft would dramatically reduce the cost of training, manufacturing and maintenance. The modular method of construction enables the basic MAP to be quickly configured with specialized or replacement modules and avoid long periods of aircraft downtime.
The present invention helps to solve some of the major problems associated with the prior art by using Stable Center of Lift (SCL) wings, whereby improving lift to drag, aerodynamic control, balance and permits the utilization of wing attachments. The various wing attachments offer the optimum wingspan, size and configuration for different speed envelopes. Designing the main wing as a module which accommodates wing attachments makes it possible to replace wing attachments with little down time, reduce the wingspan for better ground handling and simplify transportation by shipping the main wing module and wing attachments separately.
These objects, together with other objects and methods, which will be subsequently apparent, reside in the details of construction and operation as more fully hereinafter described and claimed.